When you first start decluttering, what’s the first thing you should do?

You’re standing at the bottom of a mountain of stuff, and you know things have to change. You can feel the fire in your heart for a cleaner, clearer path forward. But you’re worried. Because the job just seems enormous.

How can you start, and make your start a success? So that several hours later you aren’t sitting in an explosion of your own things, conflicted over how many pencil sharpeners you need to keep, while on the floor around you is a flood of stuff that you can’t seem to find a home for?

When I made the decision to declutter my house, it was a big goal. I imagined that when I had finished, everything would be wonderful. In reality it turned out to be a long time before I learnt that actually, decluttering is habit.

Unexperienced in keeping things to a minimum, I assumed that one great purge in every room would leave me with the clear and calm environment I craved. Decluttering commenced with a huge amount of passion and motivation, fuelled by a vision of how life would be when it was done. I sorted through every drawer, every cupboard, and tackled every surface.

It took months, and I learned some important lessons. Like how decluttering sometimes makes more mess than the clutter in the first place. And that getting the sorted clutter out of the house requires a lot of work. I also learnt that decision fatigue sets in after an hour or two. All-day sessions are not as productive as short intense bursts.

1. Finding things is easier

When surfaces and floors are clear, and things that belong together are kept together, losing your passport, your keys or other important items rarely happens.

2. Keeping things tidy takes less effort

There is less stuff to get in a mess in the first place and the things you do have are all easily put away. Getting something out is easier because you don’t have to shift a mountain of other things out out of the way to get to what you need.

When I first started decluttering and sorting through everything I owned, I was a traditional hoarder. A lot of my stuff was easy to get rid of because I had a tendency to save things that might be useful – like old magazines, storage boxes, and old towels and clothes. The appreciation that decluttering time was just as important as decluttering space was a long way off.

In the beginning, clearing things out was easy and I made great progress.

But eventually, I got stuck.

I still had a lot of stuff – more stuff than I wanted – but I didn’t seem to be able to pare it down any further.

When I first started getting rid of stuff, I listed it all on eBay. When it came to the decision between sell or donate, my reasoning was: why give something away that could make me some cash?

Partly this was because I was unemployed and living with my Dad, but also it was because I still had a very strong attachment to my things and I needed to somehow feel that I was getting compensation for getting rid of them.

Selling things however – as anyone who’s ever done it will know – takes quite a lot of time. Whether it’s a card in the newsagent’s window, a listing on eBay or the rumour mill of family and friends, getting rid of things this way is far from instant. There are item descriptions to worry about, photos, decisions on pricing, and then packaging up the item to send, or even dropping it to someone else’s house… it all adds up.